To My Father in Late September

A cold sky presses at my window,

and the leaves at every edge go brown.

I watch and listen,

though the walls are thick between us now.

The apples on the tree inside the garden

fall, unpicked. I let them fall

as I must fall and you, my father,

too must fall and sooner

than I’m willing yet to grant.

These blunt successions still appall me:

father into son to dying son,

the crude afflictions of a turning world

that still knows nothing and will never

feel a thing itself, this rock

that’s drilled and blasted, cultivated,

left to dry or burn. We soon must learn

its facelessness in sorrow,

learn to touch and turn away,

to settle in the walls of our composure,

and assume a kind of winter knowledge,

wise beyond mere generation

or the ruthless overkill of spring.